I'm planning to be in London the week of July 15 and thought I'd ask if any of you nice folks from across the Pond wanted to network at a Pub for a day or two. Just get together and meet face to face. Form partnerships for mutual benefit. Stuff like that. Kind of a Webmaster Conference without the Conference costs. Networking is what it's all about anyway. What do ya think?

I like the idea just to meet without bringing on big costs. From my experience of SEO conferences, the best value is the networking. But maby we should work on an agenda? We might even find a sponsor, there are so many companies that want to reach people like us.

Mike I am happy to meet you too. I have met with almost everyone from the old crew at SEF and a couple of the moderators here. It is good to meet the people behind the handles.

I will extend the invitation to my Brittish collegues that might not read this forum.

Let us then make a head count and see what we can do? It does not need to be costly nor complicated to make a great arrangement for such a small group.

I'd suggest keeping it informal...but discussing the idea of turning it into an annual event, and seeking sponsorship for that...be nice to have something led by us arther than led by people trying to sell us stuff

regarding accomodation...there are frequent discussions of this on the uk.local.london newsgroup...a groups.google search of that group for "hotels" should get you a fair amount of info...and a number of tasteless jokes

Well, I needed two nights due to the air schedule, and so booked what turned out to be their cheapest special for 20-22 July: single room, breakfast and dinner for £60/night Fri-Sun. The air fare was incredible: 845 SEK equal to $77 Stockholm - London round trip including taxes. An unbelievable fare for a 2½ hour flight.

I'm really going to try and make it, I'd love to put names to faces and meet all the people who've helped me out in one way or another. If people can make it from Scandinavia, I really ought to be able to make an effort from Manchester. First I have to square it with my girlfriend/soon-to-be missus, though.

bring her along...tell her you've booked a romantic weekend in London, and then a couple of days later explain that you'll have to do the candlelit dinner bit in a West End restaurant on Sunday rather than Saturday

>bring her along...tell her you've booked a romantic weekend in London, and then a couple of days later explain that you'll have to do the candlelit dinner bit in a West End restaurant on Sunday rather than Saturday

I wish I could be apart of this, it would be a very good networking experience!

side note:

Rumor has it that since there are so many SEO's gathering in one spot that Google is sending out a few covert Googlebot's in full force. They will be in an unmarked GoogleMobile™ taking photographs of all who enter the Cittie of Yorke. After gathering the photographs, they will apply a unique algo to analyze who has the best PageRank™ face. Also, anyone who has a shirt width of 5 pixels, which equals a PageRank™ of 1, will have all their sites banned from the index. In addition, if you are wearing a cloak and/or have the logo of your shirt hidden from all the public on the street you will be banned as well.